Year 5
Welcome back to Term 3. We are looking forward to a really exciting term with our Year 5 cohort. Please see below what we are up to this term.
English
In Grade 5, students are participating in a Reader's Workshop and Writer's Workshop model to strengthen their reading comprehension, writing skills and appreciation of literature. During Reader's Workshop, students read quality novels independently and in small groups through Literature Circles. They explored a range of comprehension strategies by taking on different discussion roles, including Vocabulary Enricher, Connector, Discussion Director and Summariser. These roles encouraged students to think deeply about texts by making meaningful connections, analysing vocabulary, asking thoughtful questions, identifying key ideas and supporting their thinking with evidence from the text.
During Writer's Workshop, students explore the genres of biography and poetry. Students research the lives of significant individuals and use their research to plan, draft, revise and publish an informative biography. They will explore a variety of poetic forms, analysing how poets use language to create imagery, rhythm and emotion. Students experiment with poetic devices such as similes, metaphors, personification, repetition and alliteration before planning, drafting and publishing their own original poems. As part of this unit, students will have the opportunity to submit a poem to the Red Room Poetry Forest competition, providing an authentic audience for their writing while encouraging creativity and a connection to nature and the environment. Throughout the term, students continued to develop their writing by applying the writing process, strengthening their vocabulary, sentence fluency, grammar and editing skills while writing for a range of purposes and audiences.
Maths
This term in Mathematics, students will continue to build their confidence and fluency across the Victorian Curriculum 2.0 through engaging, hands-on learning experiences.
In Number, students will develop their understanding of multiplication and division by exploring factors, multiples and divisibility rules. They will solve increasingly complex multiplication and division problems using efficient mental and written strategies, while checking the reasonableness of their answers through estimation. Students will also apply these skills to real-world and financial mathematics contexts.
Students will also investigate Measurement, Space and Statistics. They will explore strategies for finding the area of regular and irregular shapes using appropriate metric units, compare and describe the features of prisms and pyramids, and build 3D objects from their nets to strengthen their geometric reasoning. In Statistics, students will plan and conduct investigations by posing questions, collecting and representing data using a range of graphs, and interpreting patterns, trends and the most common results to draw meaningful conclusions. Throughout the term, students will be encouraged to explain their mathematical thinking, justify their strategies and apply their learning to authentic, real-world situations.
Inquiry
Students will be exploring the interesting topic of Space Science in Term 3, along with learning about and improving their Media Arts skills. Grade 5 students will learn about our solar system, the effects gravity has on our planet, Earth’s rotation and tilt and how it causes our day time and night time and affects our seasons. Additionally, students will spend time viewing and analysing quality videos to learn and understand the different media art skills (perspective, lightning, angle, effects) to then create their own script and video which communicates the knowledge they have gained.
NAIDOC Week
In Grade 5, students and teachers celebrated NAIDOC week and the achievements of notable Indigenous people. Students learned about famous and important Indigenous leaders, advocates and Indigenous representatives such as Albert Namatjira, Cathy Freeman, David Unaipon, Nova Peris and Bronwyn Bancroft. Students made links to this year's theme of "50 years of deadly" to see that the Indigenous community have many incredible and many deadly (which means the best, most excellent) role models and leaders. Students chose an Indigenous person they were interested in and researched about their life and the impact they have had on our society, then presented a written biography on their life.
Important Dates
Wednesday 29th July - Kingston Division: Girls Soccer
Friday 31st July - Kingston Division: Tee Ball
Monday 10th August - ICAS Testing: English
Monday 24th August - ICAS Testing: Mathematics
Wednesday 26th August - District Basketball
Tuesday 1st September - House Athletics Day
Friday 11th September - R U OK DAY
Monday 14th September - District Athletics
Kind Regards,
Year 5 Team
Mr Groves, Mr Littlechild and Mrs Van Zyl.